NW girls, Palmerton boys win titles
WHITEHALL - Day two of the Colonial League Championships offered up more success for a number of TIMES NEWS area athletes.
The Northwestern track team in both boys and girls competition is fresh off winning the Colonial League regular season title. Neither squad lost a meet during the regular season. In fact, the Lady Tigers haven't lost a regular season meet in two years.They were once again represented well on day two.A top performer for the Tigers was Haley Yost. Yost earned a gold in the 1600 and 800 and feels good about performing well this late in the season."In the mile I let the other girls set the pace, that's pretty much how how I ran today," said Yost. "I didn't push the pace, I just ran with control and ran hard. It definitely feels good to have two decent performances under my belt heading into districts. Now, I'm just excited to see what I can do."The Northwestern foursome of Austin Weiss, Cole Miller, Harry Hall, and Cam Richardson expected nothing less than a win in the 400 relay. All four of them got their wish as they did just that, combining for a time of 43.45.Cam Richardson, who had a ton of individual success on day two, winning the gold in 100 (11.11) and the 200 (22.54) had this to say about the 400 relay team's performance."We came into this event today wanting to win first place," said Richardson. "It was a little tighter than we expected, but we all ran the 100 today and we were sore from yesterday as well. We fought through it though and came out on top."The Tigers Jay Hereba ran a personal best 50.8 to take home the 400 gold. Hereba, who did not compete last season looked like he hasn't missed a beat after a year off from competition."It's a great feeling to win today, it's been a strong event for me throughout the year, so to win the league title in the 400 is great," said Hereba. "The biggest hurdle for me is before the race. When I'm mentally focused and ready to go I always do well. It was just awesome to go out there against some great competition and then come away with the win."Alex Partington continued his strong performance at the CL Championships, getting a gold in the shot put. Partington made a throw of 47-8 1/2 to win the event.In the day's final event, both Northwestern 1600 relay teams came away with gold. The boys squad (Cam Richardson, Alex Fixl, Ryan Cerrone, Jihad Hereba) won with a 3:31.05, while the girls team (Madeline Peery, Rachele Cerrone, Sarah Segan, Sabrina Mertz) ran a 4:10.67.Palmerton's Austin Shupp showed once again that he is a legit contender to medal at the district and state level, earning gold in the 110 hurdles, running a time of 14.54. Shupp also took gold in the 300IH on day one of the CL Championships. Simply put, the momentum Shupp is carrying into districts couldn't be any stronger."I ran real hard out of the start because I feel like that's my weakness," said Shupp. "I felt good running today, better than I did yesterday and it's funny because my time yesterday was a little better. It was just great to get points for my team and individually it's always great to win against good competition."The Blue Bombers' Gerald Pereira had himself a nice day as well. Pereira took gold in the javelin with a throw of 167-3. Pereira also came through with a solid finish in the 400, taking home second place."In the javelin I didn't start out that great, but a teammate of mine had a really nice throw around 164 feet," said Pereira. "After he threw that, it kind of refocused me a bit and I was able to come up with a first place throw. I'm just hoping for nice weather at districts, so I can get a nice throw off."Once everything was said and done Palmerton captured the boys team championship and the Northwestern girls came away with the girls title.